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Google Carousel - What Should We Now Be Doing Differently?

Google Carousel is rolling out for even more topics. How does it affect or change tracking in Google Analytics? For example, if I am in the Carousel and someone clicks my listing, then Google completes a search for my property… then the searcher clicks through to my site organically. Will I know that someone originally clicked the Carousel or will I have no idea and simply see a Google organic click? Should we be optimizing our Google+ Places listings differently? How does this change our own organic keyword targeting? In other words, if I am in the Carousel should I go after a different keyword organically? Does anyone know how many people are clicking into the Carousel vs. the organic listings or even pay per click below? Searchers behavior will be altered because of this change. What say you all?

5 Responses

You are one of several people I've seen raise this very question about analytics. The answer is - we don't know yet how this will affect data. It's a really good question! Stay tuned and I am sure there will be an avalanche of posts about this all over the web over the next couple of months.

Right now, what seems clear to me is:

- having a really good photo is critical in the carousel; some businesses are coming up with a Google Map instead of a photo and that certainly looks generic.

- having your citations in good shape are really important, because once someone clicks on the image, everything below the carousel looks like some form of a citation to me

- you still need to do everything you've already been doing in terms of having a strong website, a clean Google+ Local listing, reviews and citations.

Beyond this, the next few weeks will point out strategy changes, if any, for local business owners to be aware of. This is going to be quite a ride!

I can't get it to work for anything other than restaurant search terms at the moment. Can you confirm you've tried it and it worked for something non-food industry oriented? Also curious about what contributes to their numbered rating system and how to possibly optimize for that now.

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